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Path-finder's Tale Part 1 Chapters 3-4

3. ONE YEAR LATER

The sky was dark and overcast. A storm was brewing. It had already rained once that year. It was a strange decree of the Gods, one that the people could not really understand, even though they did not dare to challenge it. The desert was to have only one rainy day every year. The year with more than one rainfall was considered an unlucky one. The Sun Gods were angry and the only way to appease them was to send the youngest priestess of the Rain Goddesses to their Temple to be sacrificed. Strange things were said to happen during the second rain of the year. Every occurrence had to be taken as a sign from the Gods - good or bad. Such days came with miracles – or with curses.


Rashed knew that. He had been raised to look at such days with awe and fear, questioning everything that took place. And, as he gazed at the greying sky, the only coherent thought in his mind was that it couldn’t rain. Not then.


He was not at home. He had accompanied his father to a neighbouring village, thinking about buying some land for his family’s herds. In the morning, word had reached him from his village that his wife Malna would give birth that very day. At first, the news had made him glad. But that was when the sun had been up in the sky. When it got overcast and the threat of rain became real, Rashed started to fear that maybe the tidings were not so great, after all.


He was standing outside the small animal enclosure, eyeing the sky worriedly. He would have given anything to be at home with Malna. What was going through her head now, when she knew she would give birth to their first child on the second rainy night of the year? He should have been at her side. She needed him in such a dark time.


His father came out of the enclosure and went to stand beside him. He did not have to ask why Rashed looked so anxious. He could see the storm clouds quite plainly.


“Perhaps it will not rain,” he spoke in a calming voice.


Rashed did not look at him. He shook his head furiously. He knew that the older man quite likely did not believe the words and only wanted to comfort his son. But Rashed had never liked the bitter taste of false hope.


The storm clouds were a reminder. It was a sign from the Rain Goddesses. They had not forgotten Rashed’s vow. The son that was about to be born would never really belong to Rashed and Malna. For good or for ill, he would belong to the Gods. And it was Rashed himself who had seen to that.


Rashed wished he could tell all that to his father. He couldn’t – he would never be able to reveal to anyone the deal he had made for Malna. He doubted that any save the most enthusiastic supporters of the Gods would approve of him handing his unborn child over like that. As for Malna, she would never forgive his betrayal.


“Whatever happens now,” Rashed’s father spoke again, “you know you and Malna can always count on me.”


Rashed nodded quickly. He doubted his father would be just as enthusiastic to offer support in a few years’ time. By then he would get used to the idea that his first grandson had been born on the second rainy day of the year, and he would only remember what that meant.


It was late in the night when another man rode in from Red-stones village with the news that Rashed now had a son. As if in answer, the dams burst in the sky. Thunder rolled, and cool drops of rain came pouring down.

4. Rashed rode home the next day. He found the village unnaturally subdued. As he made his way up the lane to his house, he was greeted with closed looks and dark mutterings. He wondered uneasily whether something was wrong with Malna or the child. But no, he would have been told. And the only thing wrong with the child was that he had been born on the second rainy night of the year.


Malna lay in bed, looking exhausted. She did not acknowledge Rashed’s greeting but fixed him with an unblinking stare. The baby was in a wooden crib next to her bed. Rashed remembered the day he had carved it, how Malna had stood watching him, an approving smile on her face. She was no longer smiling.


Rashed approached the crib cautiously and peered in. He did not know what he had expected to see. He thought there would be signs on the child, marking him as having been born on the second rainy night of the year, as having been set apart by the Gods. There was nothing, though. He raised his head then to notice that Malna was tracing every move he made. She had yet to smile at him and there was something in her Rashed had never seen before, especially not directed at him. It felt very much like mistrust.


“Come on,” she urged him. “Say it. Everyone else has. You might as well get it over with.”


Rashed frowned. Malna’s voice lacked her usual warmth. Instead, it was bitter and harsh.


“Say what?”


Malna’s eyes flashed. Rashed could see life returning to the previously dull face – and he could also see a hint of fire. He had noticed a few times before that Malna could have a fiery temper – although she usually held it in check.


“What your mother has already said. What my own mother said when she came to visit. What everyone else who has come to see me has said. That my child is marked. That he is either blessed or cursed, and I will never know for sure which. But I do not care which. I do not care who chose my son – Gods, Goddesses, demons, I do not care. He is my child. He belongs to me first and foremost.”


Rashed listened to her outburst in horror. It bordered on sacrilege. If someone working for the priests heard her, she would have to answer for her harsh words. As for Rashed, he could not contradict her, but he could not comfort her by agreeing, either. He was the one who knew, after all. Malna was wrong. The baby did not belong to her – or to anyone else in the mortal world. Rashed had seen to that.


“He is a beautiful child, whatever his destiny,” he said in the end. “And I will be proud of him, no matter what the Gods have chosen for him.”


When he looked up again, Malna was smiling for the first time. Her warm look of gratitude and surprise should have been enough to please him. But a nagging voice in the back of his mind reminded him how completely undeserving he was of such gifts.

***

Everyone from Red-stones expected Rashed and Malna to send their son to be raised in the Temple of the Sun Gods. The babe was marked, and that was where marked children went. If he was cursed, the Temple Priests could free him from his demons. If he was chosen by the Gods, all the more reason to spend his early years in the vicinity of those he was going to serve his entire life. But the parents made no move to send the boy anywhere.


A month passed since the child’s birth, and it was time he was given a name. In small villages such as Red-stones, name-giving ceremonies were an important affair. The entire village attended and then talked about it for weeks afterwards. This one was rather subdued. The villagers came, in answer to Malna’s invitation, but their joy and well-wishes were strained. The atmosphere was tense and wary. No one knew how to take the infant born on the second rainy night of the year.


The boy was called Kassir, and even after naming him, his parents did not mention sending him to the Sun Priests. No one asked about it anymore. They already knew the question would bring upon them Malna’s wrath, and she could be a formidable defender of her child. Rashed was more temperate.


Malna never asked Rashed to take her side. She remembered his words that first morning and took them as support enough. She knew it would be an uphill battle trying to keep Kassir with them. She told herself she was ready to do whatever it took. Yet she was walking a fine line. If she said too much of what she was thinking, she would be accused of uttering blasphemies. The Priests and Priestesses did not take kindly to that, and their agents were everywhere. If they knew the hostility Malna had had for them of late, they would surely arrest her. After that, she would be exiled at best. She did not want to think about what the worst alternative was.


“I am not unfaithful,” she told herself every evening when she said her prayers to the Sun Gods and Rain Goddesses. “I am not.”


She had no wish to betray her Gods. She believed in them and worshipped them and was grateful for all the gifts they bestowed on the desert people. But she was also a mother now. She could not imagine putting anything before her infant.


“There are some things they have no right to take from you,” Malna said one day, as she was rocking her child to sleep. “There are some things the Gods and Goddesses should not take from you. Not if they are fair.”


Her mouth clamped in horror at what she said, and she looked around her hut, half-expecting it to catch fire after her disloyal words. She never said something like that out loud again. Kassir was too small to ever remember Malna’s fierce whispers that night. But they stayed with him. And they were to influence his decisions for many years to come.


Copyright Simina Lungu 2021

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